It does not work. The unique “Test­ing and assem­bly sta­tion for heavy-duty prod­ucts” — work­shop No. 8 of the Dagdizel plant — is locat­ed in the Caspi­an Sea, at a dis­tance of 2.7 kilo­me­ters from the shore. The grandiose struc­ture was built on a stone foun­da­tion laid on the seabed. Its main pur­pose was to test the prod­ucts that the plant pro­duced — tor­pe­does.
Con­struc­tion of the work­shop began in 1934, and the work was com­plet­ed in 1936. The area of the sta­tion is five thou­sand square meters. Con­struc­tion was car­ried out in an unprece­dent­ed way: on the shore, with the help of dredgers, a huge pit with a capac­i­ty of 530 thou­sand cubic meters was dug. A rein­forced con­crete “box” with a height of 14 meters was built at its bot­tom. After the under­wa­ter part of the sta­tion was built, the builders destroyed the arti­fi­cial embank­ment that sep­a­rat­ed the pit from the sea, the “box” sur­faced, it was towed almost three kilo­me­ters from the shore, where the stone plat­form was locat­ed, and installed on it. On this gigan­tic mas­sif they built the above-water part of the sta­tion, with a huge (42 meters high) obser­va­tion tow­er. Work­ers were trans­port­ed to it by a spe­cial ele­va­tor.
The work­shop was built in such a way that, in the event of a storm, work­ers could stay there for a long time. The premis­es includ­ed a din­ing room, a library, a hotel, and a gym for vol­ley­ball and bas­ket­ball. Two port break­wa­ters, as well as a ship repair shop, were built on the shore to oper­ate the sta­tion.
In 1942, the plant was evac­u­at­ed to Kaza­khstan, and the work of work­shop No. 8 was sus­pend­ed. And in the 60s, new, more mod­ern tor­pe­does were devel­oped, which required greater depths for test­ing. So the sta­tion was no longer in oper­a­tion. The aban­doned struc­ture is still locat­ed in the Caspi­an Sea.